Saturday, July 23, 2011

The Colour of Her Dress

 One of the wonderful things about working with heritage collections is that the word gets out that you love anything to do with heritage textiles.  Because of this I am sometimes offered treasures that others no longer want.  This box and its contents is one such case.

Inside the box is a collection of threads on wooden cotton reels.

 Mercerised cottons, machine twists, and polyester threads, with colour names like: Orange Lily, Light Kingfisher, Sage, and Geranium.
 The colours are fabulous, and as I looked at them and wondered about the woman who used these threads, I thought what a vibrant woman she must have been with such a dynamic selection of colours.  Then I began to wonder what each colour thread had been used to make.




So I thought my precious darlings that once a week I would pick a reel of thread and find, or design the dress that I imagine would have been sewn with the thread.


The first colour is seemingly not a colour at all, but a neutral, ivory.   For me these neutral shades have a subtle and classic beauty.

The dress I have chosen for ivory, is a 1955 Pierre Balmain dress that I believe is held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Isn't it dreamy?


7 comments:

  1. It is dreamy!!! What a fantastic blog idea! I request the orange for the next one :P

    I think we should all participate too :P This is what I imagined
    http://ladygagahot.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Lady-GaGa-in-White-Lace-37765PCN1.jpg

    Wish I could make it come up :(

    ReplyDelete
  2. Okay I will do the orange lily next Saturday night. Love you sweetheart. Hmmmm ORANGE, but its not really that sort of orange is it, its a bit mote tropical, a softer feminine orange, like a bright ripened apricot. Going to be interesting to see what I come up with. What I could do is put up everyone elses ideas that they post a link to in their comment like you did at the start of the next weeks one.

    ReplyDelete
  3. mmmm :) Kewl! Other people need to post!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oooh! Lucky you! I collect Sylko threads too (well, in the collect-and-use-them way), but I've never seen a whole box.

    I love that Pierre Balmaine dress, but at the same time feel that it reminds me of doilies and a tablecloth, and that's not a good thing!

    ReplyDelete
  5. A floor length version of this ivory dress for a wedding would be amazing

    ReplyDelete
  6. Yes it would for a more formal wedding, and Yes I do get the doily table cloth thing, but I think this dress pulls it off and just looks gorgeous.

    ReplyDelete